Part 26 (1/2)
As this was the second time he had taken this awful liberty, he would probably have been dismissed the a.s.sembly but for the presence of his father. As it was, Johnnie and Crayshaw both looked at him, not fiercely but steadily, whereupon the little fellow with deep blushes slid gently from his chair under the table.
A few days after this midnight repast, Emily, knowing that John Mortimer was away a good deal, and having a perfectly gratuitous notion that his children must be dull in consequence, got Valentine to drive her over one morning to invite them to spend a day at Brandon's house.
A great noise of shouting, drumming on battledores, and blowing through discordant horns, let them know, as they came up the lane, that the community was in a state of high activity; and when they reached the garden gate they were just in time to see the whole family vanish round a corner, running at full speed after a donkey on which Johnnie was riding.
The visitors drove inside the gate, and waited five minutes, when the donkey, having made the circuit of the premises, came galloping up, the whole tribe of young Mortimers after him. They received Emily with loving cordiality, and accounted for the violent exercise they had been taking by the declaration that this donkey never would go at all, unless he heard a great noise and clatter at his heels.
”So that if Johnnie wanted to go far, as far as to London,” observed one of the panting family, ”it would be awkward, wouldn't it?”
”And he's only a second-hand donkey, either,” exclaimed little Janie in deep disparagement of the beast; ”father bought him of the blacksmith.”
”But isn't it good fun to see him go so fast?” cried another. ”Would you like to see our donkey do it again?”
”And see him 'witch the world with n.o.ble a.s.smans.h.i.+p,” said Valentine.
Whereupon a voice above said rather faintly. ”Hear, hear!” and Crayshaw appeared leaning out of a first-floor window, the pathetic shadow more than commonly evident in his eyes, in spite of a mischievous smile. He had but lately recovered from a rheumatic fever, and was further held down by frequent attacks of asthma. Yet the moment one of these went off, the elastic spirits of boyhood enabled him to fling it into the background of his thoughts, and having rested awhile, as he was then doing, he became, according to the account Gladys gave of him at that moment, ”just like other boys, only ten times more so!”
Emily now alighted, and as they closed about her and hemmed her in, donkey and all, she felt inclined to move her elbows gently, as she had sometimes seen John do, in order to clear a little s.p.a.ce about him. ”Why does not Cray come down, too?” she asked.
”I think he has had enough of the beast,” said Barbara, ”for yesterday he was trying to make him jump; but the donkey and Cray could not agree about it. He would not jump, and at last he pitched Cray over his head.”
”Odd,” said Valentine; ”that seems a double contradiction to the proverb that 'great wits jump.'” Valentine loved to move off the scene, leaving a joke with his company. He now drove away, and Johnnie informed Emily that he had already been hard at work that morning.
”I've a right to enjoy mythelf after it,” he added, looking round in a patronising manner, ”and I have. I've not had a better lark, in fact, since Grand was a little boy.”
By these kind, though preposterous words, the a.s.sembly was stimulated to action. The frightful clatter, drumming, and blowing of horns began again, and the donkey set off with all his might, the Mortimers after him. When he returned, little Bertram was seated on his back. ”Johnnie and Cray have something very particular to do,” she was informed with gravity.
”For their holiday task?”
”Oh no, for that lovely electrifying machine of cousin Val's. Cray is always writing verses; he is going to be a poet. Johnnie was saying last week that it was not at all hard to turn poetry into Latin, and Val said he should have the machine if he could translate some that Cray wrote the other day. Do you think the Romans had any b.u.t.tons and b.u.t.tonholes?”
”I don't know. Why?”
”Because there are b.u.t.tons in one of the poems. Cray says it is a tribute--a tribute to this donkey that father has, just given us. He was inspired to write it when he saw him hanging his head over the yard gate.”
Thereupon the verses, copied in a large childish hand, were produced and read aloud:--
A TRIBUTE.
The jacka.s.s brayed; And all his pa.s.sionate dream was in that sound Which, to the stables round And other tenements, told of packs that weighed On his brown haunches; also that, alas!
His true heart sighed for Jenny, that fair a.s.s Who backward still and forward paced With panniers and the curate's children graced.
Then, when she took no heed, but turned aside Her head, he shook his ears As much as to say ”Great are--as these--my fears.”
And while I wept to think how love that preyed On the deep heart not worth a b.u.t.ton seemed To her for whom he dreamed; And while the red sun stained the welkin wide, And summer lightnings on the horizon played, Again the jacka.s.s brayed.
”And here's the other,” said Gladys. ”Johnnie says, it would be much the easier to do, only he is doubtful about the 'choker.'”
THE SCHOOLBOY TO HIS DRESS SUIT.
Nice is broiled salmon, whitebait's also nice With bread and b.u.t.ter served, no shaving thinner.